8 ms·

Because Emacs is an OS the way it should be — an extensible system with a unified UI instead of a pile of separate and hardly interoperable applications.

by Fice 10y ago

dorfsmay 10y ago
So a step further would be a way to link outside a given OS/machine, so URIs basically. The parent poster does have a point though, we don't have URI for emails...
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  We have message-ids, but those only let you find a message if you already know how to find a message store that contains it. Add an imap server name and user id, and you're most of the way there...
- mjhoy 10y ago
  Well. org-mode has its own extensible URI system of sorts. My email links are formatted mu4e:msgid:<message identifier>. My git links are magit:<project path>::commit@<git SHA>. Remote files are just file:/ssh:<user>@<server>:<remote path>. You could write your own for whatever you want, gmail links say (although then you could just use a plain old HTTP link).
- michaelhoffman 10y ago
  I use Gmail (within a web browser, not Emacs). Each conversation has its own URI. My org-mode notes contain lots of Gmail URIs.
davexunit 10y ago
"b-but the UNIX philosophy!" The more time I spend with UNIX and hear the "UNIX philosophy" used in place of argument when someone doesn't like the feature set of some software, the more I realize that we need to move on from UNIX. We should take more ideas from things like Emacs and the Lisp machines when designing our software, and less from UNIX.
- dleslie 10y ago
  Emacs has very few self-contained mega packages; in its own way, Emacs software is built by chaining together smaller packages. Many packages are little more than extensions to other packages.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    But their interop is better. Besides Emacs packages having much greater "contact surface" (packages can augment other packages, if needed), the biggest problem with UNIX philosophy is using unstructured text as exchange medium. It leads to huge waste and proliferation of bugs, as each tool or script you use has to have its own custom (and bug-ridden) parser, and outputs its own unstructured and usually undocumented data format. This is one of those moments the history of computing took a huge step backwards. All that recent push for passing JSON around instead of plaintext? That's just rediscovering what we've lost when UNIX came along.
    - westurner 10y ago
      Filenames may contain newlines. JSON strings may contain newlines. The modular aspects of the UNIX philosophy are pretty cool; the data interchange format (un-typed \n-delimited strings) is irrational (and dangerous). JSON w/ a JSONLD @context and XSD type URIs may also contain newlines (which should be escaped) Note that, with OSX bash, tab \t must be specified as $'\t'. And, sometimes, it's \r\n instead of just \n (which is extra-format metadata). And then Unicode. Oh yeah, unicodë.
      - unhammer 10y ago
        You don't have to use $'', you can also use literal tabs (ctrl-v to insert literals). The main difference between macOS and Linux that people notice is that macOS sed doesn't itself interpret \t (so you have to use literal tabs or $'' there). \r\n is Windows, not Unix. What about Unicode? (Btw, UTF-8 was created by unixers Rob Pike and Ken Thompson https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt )
Philipp__ 10y ago
It is, but I still use it as editor and development environment (I left out integrated on purpose). Beauty of Emacs is that it is what you need/want it to be, at least in my opinion and experience. What drove me away from Vim initially is Vimscript, which I didn't mind for years, but after I decided to learn Lisp and for that purpose jumped to Emacs for few months, after I went back to Vim I was pretty disgusted. I enjoyed Vim (I use NeoVim btw) as it is, modal editing and everything, but opening init.vim made my stomach hurt every time.

Because Emacs is an OS the way it should be — an extensible system with a unified UI instead of a pile of separate and hardly interoperable applications.

by Fice 10y ago

Because Emacs is an OS the way it should be — an extensible system with a unified UI instead of a pile of separate and hardly interoperable applications.

dorfsmay 10y ago

So a step further would be a way to link outside a given OS/machine, so URIs basically. The parent poster does have a point though, we don't have URI for emails...

NoGravitas 10y ago
We have message-ids, but those only let you find a message if you already know how to find a message store that contains it. Add an imap server name and user id, and you're most of the way there...
mjhoy 10y ago
Well. org-mode has its own extensible URI system of sorts. My email links are formatted mu4e:msgid:<message identifier>. My git links are magit:<project path>::commit@<git SHA>. Remote files are just file:/ssh:<user>@<server>:<remote path>. You could write your own for whatever you want, gmail links say (although then you could just use a plain old HTTP link).
michaelhoffman 10y ago
I use Gmail (within a web browser, not Emacs). Each conversation has its own URI. My org-mode notes contain lots of Gmail URIs.

davexunit 10y ago

"b-but the UNIX philosophy!" The more time I spend with UNIX and hear the "UNIX philosophy" used in place of argument when someone doesn't like the feature set of some software, the more I realize that we need to move on from UNIX. We should take more ideas from things like Emacs and the Lisp machines when designing our software, and less from UNIX.

dleslie 10y ago
Emacs has very few self-contained mega packages; in its own way, Emacs software is built by chaining together smaller packages. Many packages are little more than extensions to other packages.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  But their interop is better. Besides Emacs packages having much greater "contact surface" (packages can augment other packages, if needed), the biggest problem with UNIX philosophy is using unstructured text as exchange medium. It leads to huge waste and proliferation of bugs, as each tool or script you use has to have its own custom (and bug-ridden) parser, and outputs its own unstructured and usually undocumented data format. This is one of those moments the history of computing took a huge step backwards. All that recent push for passing JSON around instead of plaintext? That's just rediscovering what we've lost when UNIX came along.
  - westurner 10y ago
    Filenames may contain newlines. JSON strings may contain newlines. The modular aspects of the UNIX philosophy are pretty cool; the data interchange format (un-typed \n-delimited strings) is irrational (and dangerous). JSON w/ a JSONLD @context and XSD type URIs may also contain newlines (which should be escaped) Note that, with OSX bash, tab \t must be specified as $'\t'. And, sometimes, it's \r\n instead of just \n (which is extra-format metadata). And then Unicode. Oh yeah, unicodë.
    - unhammer 10y ago
      You don't have to use $'', you can also use literal tabs (ctrl-v to insert literals). The main difference between macOS and Linux that people notice is that macOS sed doesn't itself interpret \t (so you have to use literal tabs or $'' there). \r\n is Windows, not Unix. What about Unicode? (Btw, UTF-8 was created by unixers Rob Pike and Ken Thompson https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt )

Philipp__ 10y ago

It is, but I still use it as editor and development environment (I left out integrated on purpose). Beauty of Emacs is that it is what you need/want it to be, at least in my opinion and experience. What drove me away from Vim initially is Vimscript, which I didn't mind for years, but after I decided to learn Lisp and for that purpose jumped to Emacs for few months, after I went back to Vim I was pretty disgusted. I enjoyed Vim (I use NeoVim btw) as it is, modal editing and everything, but opening init.vim made my stomach hurt every time.